Comments on: Fixing a CD in 3 easy steps http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/2009/01/fixing-a-cd-in-3-easy-steps/ Demystifying Code Internals, Secrets and more… Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:59:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: born2c0de http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/2009/01/fixing-a-cd-in-3-easy-steps/comment-page-1/#comment-11 born2c0de Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:56:20 +0000 http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/?p=51#comment-11 I never said I was 100% successful. I recovered tiny readme.txt files of less than 100KB and a few .AVI files. AVI Files can be played from anywhere as long as the header (again less than 100kb) is intact (I was lucky the header was fine). I guess that answers why I was able to recover some files. As for your second comment, you are right. The disc was unreadable and Windows could not even detect a CD in the drive although there was one. I had to use recovery tools which had their own drivers to access individual sectors (i repeat...not files) on the CD which I still count as a success. I never said I was 100% successful. I recovered tiny readme.txt files of less than 100KB and a few .AVI files. AVI Files can be played from anywhere as long as the header (again less than 100kb) is intact (I was lucky the header was fine). I guess that answers why I was able to recover some files.

As for your second comment, you are right. The disc was unreadable and Windows could not even detect a CD in the drive although there was one.

I had to use recovery tools which had their own drivers to access individual sectors (i repeat…not files) on the CD which I still count as a success.

]]> By: Robin http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/2009/01/fixing-a-cd-in-3-easy-steps/comment-page-1/#comment-10 Robin Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:41:52 +0000 http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/?p=51#comment-10 I also think you got lucky. Coz the tracks on the disk are so microscopic and minutely spaced that if you had stuck the two pieces even a few micrometres away from their original position, the disk would be completely unreadable. (The reason this post excited me so much is that I had tried this myself a few years ago but with no result. Although I suspect I managed to damage my cd drive.) I also think you got lucky. Coz the tracks on the disk are so microscopic and minutely spaced that if you had stuck the two pieces even a few micrometres away from their original position, the disk would be completely unreadable.

(The reason this post excited me so much is that I had tried this myself a few years ago but with no result. Although I suspect I managed to damage my cd drive.)

]]> By: Robin http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/2009/01/fixing-a-cd-in-3-easy-steps/comment-page-1/#comment-9 Robin Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:32:57 +0000 http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/?p=51#comment-9 Hmm...Well I found it amazing that you could recover anything at all. Here's why: Now the data on the disk is stored on tracks that spiral outwards. And any file of sufficient size (say 100kB) would occupy atleast 1 complete spiral. From the image of the broken disc, I gather that atleast a few bytes of data are lost at each point along the entire length of the crack ie. each spiral has lost atleast some data. Implying that every file (of sufficient size) would loose atleast a few unrecoverable bytes which would render the rest of the data useless. How you managed to recover anything at all is mind blowing. Hmm…Well I found it amazing that you could recover anything at all. Here’s why: Now the data on the disk is stored on tracks that spiral outwards. And any file of sufficient size (say 100kB) would occupy atleast 1 complete spiral. From the image of the broken disc, I gather that atleast a few bytes of data are lost at each point along the entire length of the crack ie. each spiral has lost atleast some data. Implying that every file (of sufficient size) would loose atleast a few unrecoverable bytes which would render the rest of the data useless.

How you managed to recover anything at all is mind blowing.

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